Dear Mother, Daddy, and Toby,
Today is the 18th (of July). I got your letter yesterday, and Mrs. Nelson’s address. I wrote her a letter yesterday. I went to the Service Club last night, and after that, I went to the War Room. The War Room is a building that has short wave radio, a teletype machine, maps from all the battle fronts, and a guide to explain the war situation. It’s really very interesting. The news keeps coming in all the time on the ticker tape. That isn’t all though - I was listening to the radio,
and I heard a broadcast from Minneapolis. It was coming from the Orpheum Theater. The program was Dr. IQ which is a question and answer program. It’s time to go now. The time is 7:30 A.M. I’ll finish this letter when I come back.
I just got back. It’s 5:15 P.M. We really had a swell time today. No fooling. We started off with a hike to the drill field which is about 2 miles away. We had to march in formation, and sing.
When we got there, they found a nice hot place for us right in the sunshine. We sat on the ground for about 1 and half hours listening to some jerk sling the bull about military courtesy. By that time, the sun had moved a little, so we moved too. Then we sat down on the ground again, and listened to another jerk preach for about an hour. After that, I was pretty stiff from sitting so long. Then we marched over to another part of the drill field, and had a little over an hour of P.T. (physical torture). By that time, it was time to eat, so we all got back into formation, and marched back ( about 1 and a half miles) to the mess hall.
After dinner, we go back into formation and marched back to drill field. We sat down again and listen to another bunch of bull about gas warfare.
Then we had an hour of close order drill. I suppose you know what that is ( right face, left face etc.).
Then we went into the gas chamber to see what we learned. The first time I went through I put my gas mask on first. Then we all went through there a second time. This time we went in with our gas masks off. We couldn’t put the gas mask on until till we had come into the gas filled room, and closed the door. I surely put that mask on in a hurry. Then after we put our masks on, we had to take them off again and walk through the gas filled room with no masks. When I got to the door, I had to stop and tell the instruction my name and serial number. This was just so we could get to see what the gas smelled like. The gas was just tear gas and it can’t do any real harm. It only makes the eyes burn, and it goes away as soon as you go outside.
When we all got through the gas chamber, we got back into formation. It was raining a little bit, and we started to march back to the barracks. When we got about half way back, the light rain turned into heavy hail stones. I was really glad to have my helmet on.
The mailman just came in and he’s calling off the names. He just called off my name. It was a post card from Toby.
Nothing else now.
Love, Sonny